


the weight of something

by mukust



Category: Code Geass
Genre: Canon Compliant, Dubcon Cuddling, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M, Non-Consensual Drug Use, OR: 1270 words about, and i cant write anything about lelouch and suzaku, his anime knifed me, holy FUCKING shit hello hi, im losing my shit over 'dubcon cuddling' being a tag like. well now i have to use it, im new to this fandom and im boiling, in a cauldron vat of my own piss and tears, in an alley at 3 am, in the meaty part of my shoulder, that doesnt try to turn itself into the fucking iliad, the fucking 2 seconds of animation, this was supposed to be a drabble but, where you see lelouch asleep on suzakus shoulder in the akito ova
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-05
Updated: 2017-05-05
Packaged: 2018-10-28 07:15:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10826400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mukust/pseuds/mukust
Summary: Set during Akito; what happened in Suzaku and Lelouch's containment cell between the strangling and the snuggling.





	the weight of something

The choking only lasts until Suzaku feels Lelouch’s pulse under his thumb.

Breathe.

Crumple down. Lelouch is talking, still. Suzaku sits himself down on his own cot and, amidst the roaring of his own pulse, rises up from himself like a lantern. Not all the way, not completely; he is still tethered here. But enough to let his blood get quieter. 

It’s strange. 

“Suzaku.” 

Suzaku’s hands clench together more tightly.

“Are we still going fishing tomorrow?”

Some time must have passed, because Lelouch doesn’t sound scared or little or hurt or angry or like he remembers what just happened at all. He’s slipped elsewhere, and his voice, Suzaku recognizes, is once more earnest and childish, though a little bit rough, a little bit constricted from having been choked.

“Your tutor won’t be mad?”

Sometimes Suzaku wishes that the Britannian army's go-to sedative was not a carefully administered, street-clean variant of Refrain, or, like, that it was literally anything other than Refrain. Sometimes he wishes that Julius Kingsley's favorite method of coping wasn't vodka in a water bottle. Sometimes he wishes that Lelouch didn't get hysterical and claw at his own face at the tiniest identity crisis. This time's the worst, though. Finding out you led a political revolution a couple of months ago is apparently kind of shocking. Apparently it kind of ruins the plan. Apparently it gets you and your most trusted escort put up in a holding cell. Apparently it—  
  
it hurts to swallow, and Suzaku’s eyes are prickling.  Lelouch’s voice is childish and sweet, nothing like the tenor of the ten year old boy Suzaku remembers but most of the cadence, if just a step or two faltering. When Suzaku glances up at him, his arms are folded across his chest and his head is cocked, expression aloofly quizzical, a pose he often affected when they were children and he was attempting to cover up anxiety with condescension. And it’s awful because it’s so recognizable, Suzaku recognizes immediately what he’s seeing— the snoot of the haughty boyprince stretched thin over the frame of a body that gets acne and erections and, seeing nothing wrong with it, seeing no reason why it should be held against him, for the sake of a political lie, ends the lives of two m

above them, the ceiling is another world. Five or six black moths pilgrim dizzily around the envy-green fluorescent lights of the holding cell, clamber against the air like clumsy swimmers. 

What Suzaku is not about to do is be weak. Now, Suzaku knows that he is a weak person. There are a lot of ways he could be weak right now. One way would be to touch Lelouch violently. He just did that, after all, but stopped himself very quickly. There are probably lots of people who would say that Lelouch deserved to die, that to execute him would not be wrong, but Suzaku made a promise to the world that he is not going to take any more lives besides his own. One was enough.  _ At least that, _ Suzaku thinks.  _ At the very, very least, I should be able to handle that. _

So that was one of them down— Suzaku, do not think that maybe, if it ever came down to really killing Lelouch, you don’t think you could. As Suzaku watches, one of the moths flies too close to the bulb of the light overhead, fries itself and drops to the floor like a grain of pepper. 

“Suzaku?”

Something cold settles like a hand on the back of Suzaku’s neck as he closes his eyes and tries to place exactly where Lelouch must be right now. Aside from on the cot across the tile. He’s somewhere warm. He’s further gone, across nautical miles of Pacific ocean; his feet are bare again, alive against hot grass in a clean and beautiful field. There are some engine drones that you can mistake for cicadas if you have to. Suzaku is searching for Lelouch. In their old clubhouse. Between sunflower stalks. When Suzaku wets his lips and opens his eyes, he’s the only one back in the holding cell. But he’s testing waters when he says “What, you mean Tohdoh?”

Suzaku forces himself to look at Lelouch, so he sees the childish recognition slowly dawn across his face before he nods once, biting his lip in sweet worry. When they were kids, Suzaku, Lelouch, and Nunnally used to go fishing together all the time. Once, they brought a tent and sleeping bags and star charts, made an overnight trip out of it. That was the night Suzaku learnt about s’mores. He’d never tasted one before.  _ Here,  _ said Lelouch,  _ I made you one, try it,  _ and Suzaku took one bite, shoved the entire thing in his mouth, and wept. Those burns will always be on his fingertips. 

When Lelouch speaks, he sounds ten years old and drunk. “I know he doesn’t like it when you skip practice.”

Suzaku is really here now though, in this green cell— and Lelouch is the one back there, little and warm, huddled in that red campground. His body’s presence in the here-and-now, his body’s shoulder next to Suzaku’s shoulder, is misleading, Suzaku realizes, has been misleading since he dragged this body before the king. Lelouch leapt out of his own eye, out of this summer, and into the summer-of-seven-years-ago as soon as Suzaku held it open, and he’s been there, Suzaku realizes sadly, almost this whole time. Few times has he been dragged back, kicking and screaming. Lelouch’s shoulderblades are two lumps of black coal. Who is Julius Kingsley? A figure with a blank face.

“Yeah, but I already talked to him about this.” Suzaku says. The words come so easily— these are the exact ones he said before. “He says it’s fine. He gave me the weekend off.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. He gave me the weekend off.”

“He gave you the weekend off?”

“Yeah. Yes.” Suzaku feels a spark of irritation. The real conversation hadn’t gone like this, when they’d actually had it. Lelouch had never used to be this fucking slow. 

But then it’s gone again. For the past few months everything has felt a little bit like a dream you wake up from with a sore throat. So when Suzaku blinks and Lelouch is weighing down the cot beside him, smelling of stale sweat and sterile chemicals, trace of leftover alcohol, hand soap from the bathroom he tried to wash his face with, the surprise inside of him is not very much. He only turns. This is a way of sitting where he is close enough to press his lips into Lelouch’s hair. The white moon of Lelouch’s shoulder is touching Suzaku’s shoulder, and it is sticky and smooth. Something shifts. Some parts fit together.

“You can stay?” 

“Yeah, Lelouch. I can stay. We can stay here, like this.” 

From the sound of his voice Suzaku can tell that his eyes are closed. Suzaku’s own eyes are stinging with a feeling he can’t remember or name.

“Oh.” Says Lelouch. It’s barely anything more than a sleepy little huff, and in a way, Suzaku thinks that is is the tiniest giant sound he has ever heard. It sets something off in him, some bizarre urge to protect— a feeling he gets, sometimes, around Lelouch, something that makes every muscle in his body tighten, ringing out  _ stay still, stay still, stay still _ . Suzaku goes warm and rigid, breathless, like he’s trying not to spook off a deer. “Then... Suzaku. It’s cold. Can I...”

Whose heartbeat is that, golden and hummingbird? Does it belong to whatever voice says “Yeah, Lelouch. Go to sleep.”? Would the jury like to replay the recording a second time? It doesn’t matter. While four or five moths circle overhead in lazy halos, Suzaku stays statue still. One o’ clock creeps two o’ clock creeps three o’ clock creeps four. And while the evil sickly morning outside rolled onward only small parts of Suzaku slept. Now a fingernail, now a heartbeat, now an arm. The worst kind of dream is the kind you don’t remember. Lelouch is so fragile; you could hurt him so easily. Rolo swings open the anvil of narrative at six o’ clock dawn.

**Author's Note:**

>   
> 
> 
> [title source](http://naizakhan.com/gallery/la-linea-negra-1995-1/#!prettyPhoto%5Bla-linea-negra-1995%5D/6/)


End file.
